'Reel Thing' in the Provincetown Banner: 'Argo'

Monday

Oct 22, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 22, 2012 at 10:04 PM

Sporting more mustaches, aviator glasses and leisure suits than a vintage porn film, Ben Affleck’s third and most ambitious directorial effort, “Argo,” re-creates the late 1970s in its story and, most impressively, its cinematic confidence. After two very good Boston-set films, “Gone Baby Gone” in 2007 and “The Town” in 2010, Affleck stretches and proves himself a worthy successor to such politically minded entertainers from Hollywood’s golden era of the ’70s as Alan J. Pakula, Sydney Pollack and Sidney Lumet.

Loren King

Sporting more mustaches, aviator glasses and leisure suits than a vintage porn film, Ben Affleck’s third and most ambitious directorial effort, “Argo,” re-creates the late 1970s in its story and, most impressively, its cinematic confidence. After two very good Boston-set films, “Gone Baby Gone” in 2007 and “The Town” in 2010, Affleck stretches and proves himself a worthy successor to such politically minded entertainers from Hollywood’s golden era of the ’70s as Alan J. Pakula, Sydney Pollack and Sidney Lumet.

“Argo” is the tense, true, but little known (since the info was declassified only in 1997 by President Clinton) tale of how the CIA, with help from the Canadian government, rescued six Americans from Iran in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis. “Argo” begins by establishing historical context, then swiftly moves to a documentary-style sequence of the events that took place on Nov. 4, 1979, when Iranian revolutionaries protesting outside the American embassy stormed the building. The film efficiently sets the political climate with this taut, gritty scene, as the frightened diplomats start furiously shredding documents before revolutionaries capture 52 men and women who were then held for 444 days. But six Americans fled the embassy undetected, and holed up at the home of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (played by Victor Garber). Their lives (and his) in danger, the C.I.A., State Department and President Carter worked to figure out how to get them out of Iran safely.

It’s at this point that “Argo” takes off with the too-outlandish-to-be-true behind-the-scenes machinations of Antonio J. Mendez (played by Affleck), a C.I.A. officer, and his superior at Langley (Bryan Cranston). Mendez concocts a scheme to try to free the Americans with a ruse that he’s a movie director scouting locations in Iran and the Americans are his Canadian film crew for a sci-fi movie called “Argo” (named for the planet on which it’s set with a nod to “Jason and the Argonauts”). Mendez goes to Los Angeles to enlist the help of two film industry veterans, a wizened makeup artist (John Goodman) and a crusty has-been producer (Alan Arkin in great form).

It isn’t just a matter of pretense. The fake film has to appear convincing, so the trio take out ads in the trade papers, rent an office and stage a press conference to announce the production. The zesty script by Chris Terrio is full of sharp dialogue and film industry jokes but “Argo” makes this audacious story riveting. Affleck never loses sight of how high the stakes are for the Americans in hiding. He expertly cross-cuts between the terrified Americans, the worried bureaucrats in Washington, the creative guys in Hollywood and the Iranians who, aware that six Americans are unaccounted for, are sifting through shredded photographs. Affleck actually manages to make scenes of child laborers painstakingly connecting strips of paper to identify the missing folks white-knuckle suspenseful.

The most edge-of-the-seat moments come when Mendez arrives in Tehran, where he sees mobs setting cars on fire and executed bodies hanging from construction cranes. The increasingly frazzled Americans, understandably wary of Mendez and his plan, have just 24 hours to adjust to their new identities and their fake jobs on the fake film crew. “Argo” is a superbly crafted, entertaining thriller woven with the timely context of American-Iranian tensions. It deserves all its Oscar buzz, recalling, variously, landmark ’70s films like “Three Days of the Condor,” “Serpico” and “The Parallax View.” The current issues in the news only underscore the tension, drama and credibility, as “Argo” powerfully reminds us what happened then and what’s still happening now.

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